I just got back from my daughter’s archery tournament and sat down to right this review. I looked up the phrase “too many twists,” and it turns out that the phrase applies to archery. When you put a new string on a bow, you twist it. But, if you twist it too often, it will negatively affect your aim. The bow cannot properly work when there are too many twists in the string.

The same is true of movies. A plot twist or two is a great way to build suspense and subvert expectations, adding to the enjoyment of the film. But too many twists start to feel like a cheat to get the result you want, tells the audience not to trust what they’re seeing, and stretches credulity so far that the movie misses being the effective thriller it could have been. And so it is with Missing. The first plot twist or two immerses you into a reasonably well-crafted mystery. But the movie goes for several twists too many, robbing the movie of the tension it was trying to achieve.

Missing comes from first-time writer/directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick. The two previously served as editors on 2018’s Searching, about a dad who tries to find his missing daughter, using only her computer. Missing is a spiritual sequel of Searching (the plot of the first movie is featured in a true-crime TV show seen at the beginning), and it uses the same device of having everything occur on a screen of some sort. So everything we see has to be in an email, text, website, FaceTime call, security camera, and so on. The gimmick worked relatively well in Searching and pretty well here for much of the run time. At least early on, you get caught up in the story enough that it plays pretty naturally on screen. There comes a point, however, when the movie feels like it’s cheating on the conceit. The main character leaves her camera on all the time so you can see her reactions even if people don’t really do that. Cameras that wouldn’t pan or zoom feel like they do here just to satisfy the story’s demand. And when the third act needs to rely almost solely on security cameras, it all feels forced. But, for the most part, the device is effective enough.

The same is true of the story. Storm Reid (Bloodsport’s daughter in The Suicide Squad) plays June, a teenager who lost her father to cancer at a young age. She seems has a strained relationship with her mother Grace (The Best Man‘s Nia Long), who is going away for a weekend vacation to Colombia with boyfriend Kevin (Lost’s Ken Leung). When her mom and Kevin don’t meet June at the airport, June begins to investigate what happened to them. With the help of an FBI agent at the American embassy and an online errand runner for hire (Joaquim de Almeida), June uncovers a plot to kidnap Grace by Kevin. Or by someone else. Or a plot for Kevin to help Grace disappear. Or so on and so on. The direction of the plot turns so many times that, by the time it reveals what was going on the whole time, it feels quite preposterous. The actual answer to what is going on could have been pretty compelling, but the movie took so many turns getting that it felt insincere even if all the clues added up the whole time.

It is January, so that’s a time that studios often dump small, cheap films like this one to take advantage of the lack of competition. This is not exactly a feature cast; Nia Long is probably the most well-known of the stars and she’s not actually in that much of the film. Reid does a fairly fine job as June, and it’s always a treat to see Leung and especially de Almeida, who is wonderful here, getting the opportunity to be something other than the heavy (e.g., Clear and Present Danger, Fast Five). But the plot eventually does a disservice to these actors. For a little more than half the film, it really is quite compelling and elevates much of the talent and technical decisions. But, yes, a twisty movie can get a little too twisty, and this one does just that, making Missing not just a title, but also a description of the movie’s effectiveness.

Missing is currently in theaters.

(Photo credit: Sony Pictures)